While I'm unemployed, I've got to keep trying to bring money into the house. I haven't started receiving checks from Unemployment yet, and since there's some question of whether or not I'll be approved (I was fired from my job, but the reason I was fired was because I'd given six months' notice. It's a long story, and I'll post it sometime) I figure that I'd better do what I can do bring some other dough into the house. My wife, being a student, brings in what she can, but most of her time is eaten up by schoolwork.
I've posted on Craigslist for several things. I'm capable of tutoring math, physics, and computer science, so I posted my tutoring services. I have yet to get a bite on that. I'm also advertising motorcycle repair - I'll come to the client, as I don't have a garage. :) I got two nibbles on that, but as of yet, nothing has come through. Maybe when it warms up a little more people will be interested in getting their bikes ready for the spring.
I'm also walking dogs. Well, one dog. My friend Laura just adopted a retired racing greyhound. She works a lot, so she had been taking him to doggy day-care. This gets pricey pretty quick, though, so as a favor to her, I take him out for a walk every now and again. I'm thinking that I might could make a bit of dough walking other people's dogs, so I'm going to print up some flyers and put them up downtown, Westport, and in Crossroads. I've also posted on Craigslist about the dog-walking.
Speaking of Craigslist, I was browsing around CL last night and saw a posting for motorcycle funeral escorts. They pay something like $40/run, so of course I jumped right on that. Also a TV focus group that pays $125. Then there was this job that involved going around and taking photos of hotel event boards, but that sounded a little bit shady, so I didn't pursue it.
I'm also going to look into substitute teaching. It pays about $100 a day, which is nothing to sneeze at. I just have to get 3 professional letters of reference, which should be a little interesting, as all my professional references are computer people.
So I'm still hoping for the unemployment to come through, 'cos right now I'm not bringing in much of anything.
We are living carefully, though. We've been keeping the house at 65 degrees, which keeps the gas bill down. We don't have cable TV (though we do have cable Internet). We carefully budget our food money - I buy reduced-for-quick-sale meat at Sun Fresh, and buy as much as I can from Save-a-Lot. Next month, we'll be buying a box of meat from Angel Food Ministries for cheap. And we almost never eat out any more. So we're stretching the money about as far as we can.
Showing posts with label unemployment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unemployment. Show all posts
Friday, February 15, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Looking for a job
As part of the terms of Missouri's unemployment insurance, I am required to apply for at least 3 jobs a week. Thankfully, being a computer geek, I can do this from the comfort of my own home. I just go to CareerBuilder, where I've uploaded my resume already, and look at the jobs listed there. I can often "quick apply" for a job - since I've already uploaded my resume, all I have to do is click on the "quick apply" button and off I go. Sometimes I'll write a cover letter to go with it, but I'm really not sure if the cover letter does any good - these recruiters are receiving hundreds and hundreds of resumes for these positions, and it seems to me that while a cover letter might get read, more often than not they'll just skip over the cover letter entirely and glance at the resume, looking for a reason to rule it out.
Then there are the jobs that I can't "quick apply" for. These are generally the jobs that have set up some kind of pre-screening process to rule out unqualified applicants. Sometimes this is fairly painless. In these cases, I just answer a few questions about my background, upload my resume, and I'm done. Then there are the sites where it takes a good twenty minutes to apply for a job. A good example of this is KU Med.
I have to assume that whoever built KU Med's application portal was guided by some rules on the hiring of medical staff like doctors and nurses. Since patients' lives potentially depend upon these people, it makes sense that they would be screened very rigorously. Then there's me. I applied for a network administrator position there. Yes, there would certainly be consequences if I didn't do my job well, even somewhat severe consequences, but people's lives? Hardly. This would be a position with no direct patient contact - no patient interaction whatsoever, as I see it - yet I had to go through a long and involved application process.
For one thing, I had to list where I'd lived for the past seven years. Now, if I were having patient contact, I could understand that - you wouldn't want to risk bringing a potential carrier of some nasty disease into contact with folk whose immune systems are already weak. But a computer geek? Seems a bit excessive. None the less, I dutifully listed my whereabouts for the past seven years. I just thank the gods they didn't want addresses.
For another, they wanted ten years of employment history, and explanations of gaps in unemployment. This I don't understand at all. My resume, right now, contains my work history from May 2003 until January 2008. May 2003 was when I got my first programming job - prior to that, I did a lot of dialup tech support and a bit of general onsite helpdesk-type stuff. I also worked at Papa John's for a while slinging pizza and in the College of Charleston (my alma mater) computer lab. I don't feel that I gained much valuable experience at those jobs, just the dough to pay the bills. That, and the fact that the specific dates are pretty murky in my memory, is why I don't list them on my resume. But apparently they want to know all of this.
They finally did give me a place to copy/paste my resume. Except that it didn't work. There was just a vast blank space where a text area (also a vast blank space, but one you can type in) should have been. I was able to spell-check this vast blank space, though, and I was pleased to discover that I hadn't misspelled a single bit of all that nothing.
Then there are the jobs that I can't "quick apply" for. These are generally the jobs that have set up some kind of pre-screening process to rule out unqualified applicants. Sometimes this is fairly painless. In these cases, I just answer a few questions about my background, upload my resume, and I'm done. Then there are the sites where it takes a good twenty minutes to apply for a job. A good example of this is KU Med.
I have to assume that whoever built KU Med's application portal was guided by some rules on the hiring of medical staff like doctors and nurses. Since patients' lives potentially depend upon these people, it makes sense that they would be screened very rigorously. Then there's me. I applied for a network administrator position there. Yes, there would certainly be consequences if I didn't do my job well, even somewhat severe consequences, but people's lives? Hardly. This would be a position with no direct patient contact - no patient interaction whatsoever, as I see it - yet I had to go through a long and involved application process.
For one thing, I had to list where I'd lived for the past seven years. Now, if I were having patient contact, I could understand that - you wouldn't want to risk bringing a potential carrier of some nasty disease into contact with folk whose immune systems are already weak. But a computer geek? Seems a bit excessive. None the less, I dutifully listed my whereabouts for the past seven years. I just thank the gods they didn't want addresses.
For another, they wanted ten years of employment history, and explanations of gaps in unemployment. This I don't understand at all. My resume, right now, contains my work history from May 2003 until January 2008. May 2003 was when I got my first programming job - prior to that, I did a lot of dialup tech support and a bit of general onsite helpdesk-type stuff. I also worked at Papa John's for a while slinging pizza and in the College of Charleston (my alma mater) computer lab. I don't feel that I gained much valuable experience at those jobs, just the dough to pay the bills. That, and the fact that the specific dates are pretty murky in my memory, is why I don't list them on my resume. But apparently they want to know all of this.
They finally did give me a place to copy/paste my resume. Except that it didn't work. There was just a vast blank space where a text area (also a vast blank space, but one you can type in) should have been. I was able to spell-check this vast blank space, though, and I was pleased to discover that I hadn't misspelled a single bit of all that nothing.
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